The first train ride across Aleppo since 2012 revealed the terrible destruction the city has suffered since President Bashar al-Assad reacted brutally to civil protests in 2011. His portrait adorned the train.
Hundreds of Syrians took a train through battle-scarred east Aleppo on Thursday as services resumed for the first time after four years of fighting, a photographer working with AFP said.
Men, women and children peered out the windows as they rode across eastern districts after regime forces recaptured them from rebels in December, the photographer said.
It was the train’s first such trip since rebels overran east Aleppo in the summer of 2012, in effect dividing the northern city into a regime-held west and a rebel-controlled east.
A driver in a leather jacket ferried the full carriages from Jibreen station on the city’s eastern outskirts across the city’s former front line to Aleppo’s main Baghdad railway station.
As they slowly moved through the rubble, the passengers — surprised at the extent of the damage — pulled out their cellphones to take pictures.
On the ground in the eastern side, which is strewn with debris after years of air strikes, people gathered alongside the tracks, staring at the first train they had seen since
2012.
Passengers rode the train, which bore portraits of President Bashar al-Assad at the front and in the carriages, in a one-hour round trip, the photographer said.
Syria’s Transport Minister, Ali Hamoud, said the resumption of train services between the two stations came after “the victory of the heroes of the Syrian army, returning safety and stability to the whole city”.
Because of Syria’s conflict, services remain suspended between Aleppo and other main cities.
An inspection uncovered 40 points of damage “from terrorism” along the line, the minister said, using the term the regime uses to refer to the rebels.
The line was reopened after repairs that took less than 20 days, he said in a statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.
Najib Faris, the head of the public railway company, announced there would be four trips a day between the Jibreen and Baghdad stations for up to 600 passengers for each trip.
Once an economic hub, Aleppo has been ravaged in the country’s nearly six-year war, in which more than 310 000 people have been killed and millions displaced.
The conflict started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests and has since spiralled into a complex war. — AFP